“As the Abbey of Tintern,” says the author of the Beauties, Harmonies, and Sublimities of Nature, “is the most beautiful and picturesque of all our Gothic monuments, so is the situation one of the most sequestered and delightful. One more abounding in that peculiar kind of scenery, which excites the mingled sensations of content, religion, and enthusiasm, it is impossible to behold. There every arch infuses a solemn energy, as it were, into inanimate nature: a sublime antiquity breathes mildly into the heart; and the soul, pure and passionless, appears susceptible of that state of tranquillity, which is the perfection of every earthly wish. Never has Colonna wandered among the woods, surrounding this venerable ruin, standing on the banks of a river, almost as sacred to the imagination as the spot, where the Cephisus and the Ilyssus mingle their waters, but he has wished himself a landscape-painter. He has never sat upon its broken columns and beheld its mutilated fragments; and its waving arches and pillars decorated with festoons of ivy; but he has formed the wish to forsake the world, and resign himself entirely to the tranquil studies of philosophy. Is there a man, my Lelius, too rich, too great, too powerful, for these emotions? Is there one too ignorant, too vain, and too presumptuous, to indulge them? Envy him not! From him the pillars of Palmyra would not draw one sigh; the massacre of Glencoe, the matins of Moscow, or the Sicilian vespers, would elicit no tear.” As we receded from the banks, Tintern Abbey, with the Gothic fret-work of the eastern window, seemingly bound together by the treillage of ivy, appeared in the most pleasing point of view; sloping hills and rich woods forming a fine back-ground. As we drew nearer CHEPSTOW,